


the sea is divided

by kurgaya



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Bending (Avatar), Blood and Injury, Families of Choice, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Post-Battle of Scarif, Recovery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-25
Updated: 2017-04-25
Packaged: 2018-10-23 22:19:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,632
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10728417
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kurgaya/pseuds/kurgaya
Summary: “You said that you couldn’t bend,” Jyn accuses, weary rather than angry, clinging onto the side of the shuttle alongside the rest of them - those that Baze cares about: Chirrut, Bodhi, and Cassian, all of them alive.“No, I said that I made use of heavy weaponry. I did not say I could not bend,” Baze explains.Jyn doesn’t sound pleased with Baze’s response, but he isn’t surprised. “So - what then? Chirrut’s a bender too?”[Written for spiritassassin week day 2: alternate universe]





	the sea is divided

**Author's Note:**

> Why is it that whenever I say, "I'm going to write a drabble!" something like this always happens??
> 
>  **A brief(?) explanation of how I've tried to meld these two universes together can be found in the end notes.** It's backstory, so it doesn't spoil the fic :) This ended up being less of a "bending au" and more of "the post-scarif fic that cams always wanted to write with some bending thrown in".
> 
> With special thanks to my friend, asexualchemist on tumblr, for helping me with worldbuilding and when I was freaking out upon realising that the entire premise of my fic was a plot hole. 'Cause I'm dumb like that :P
> 
> Please enjoy!

 

Scarif smolders. Its tropics bow under heavy gunfire, the peaceful woods infested by rebel and imperial forces alike. Blood stains the crystal waters and golden shores of this idyllic planet, once untouched except by ignorance, protecting an imperial base like a fanciful, picturesque swamp. Scarif was burning long before Rogue One bombed its beaches, before they trampled its greenery and died upon its sands, but only now do fires rage and smokes blaze up towards the sky.

Baze blinks the dirt of this overturned planet from his eyes. He’s on his side - thrown, he remembers, fire at his back and metal at his feet, the grey slabs of the console platform clanging like thunder as he ran across it. As he ran to Chirrut, to the switch, towards the sharp black armour of the stormtroopers looming through the smoke. He remembers white-hot blaster bolts splitting open the air and the shriek of TIE fighters chasing X-wings. He could smell metal burning hot and copper sizzling in the sand. The clank - the reluctant, groaning clank of the master switch yielding to Chirrut’s hand had resounded as the temple bells once did, solemn tolls the hour’s warning and louder than any grenade. Baze had grappled for his husband’s robes, his repeater cannon screaming like Chirrut’s name in his throat; _come back!_ he had cried, the cannon shaking as it fired shot after shot, Baze shaking as he chased Chirrut into the blast of the clattering grenade.

 _Chirrut_. _Grenade_.

Baze’s untamable knots of hair unpeel from his face as he heaves himself up. Blood dribbles down his cheek, spilling over scars old and new; he blinks it from his eyes and spits blackened clots from his mouth, breath quaking in his lungs to shape terrified vowels at his tongue: _Chirrut_ is his plea, _Chirrut, Chirrut, please -_

Chunks of Baze’s faithful repeater cannon lay strewn about him. He crawls over them, hauling his fire-torn flight suit and the shattered remains of his armour across the bloodied, stalemate sands to where Chirrut lies, just a few feet away but beyond what Baze’s body can endure. He curls himself around his husband, shielding him from the last smatterings of rifle fire as he had shielded him - _tried_ to shield him - from the blast. Baze’s left arm is deadweight at his side, dragging behind him as he drags the pieces of his cannon and the energy tank smoking at his back, but Baze spares himself little thought. One arm is more than enough to reach for his husband, and Baze ducks his head low against Chirrut’s chest, praying as he has not prayed in decades to anyone or any _thing_ that may be listening to be kind, to allow him this one mercy, to please, _please_ take anything from him but not _this_ , not Chirrut, _anything but Chirrut_.

Chirrut stirs. Sightless eyes peer up at Baze, accompanied by a grimace, a soft call of his name. Relief punches out of Baze’s chest, catches like a sob in his throat, and Chirrut jerks towards the noise as he always has done, promising retribution as though personally offended by whatever has caused Baze to utter such a sound. _It’s you, you stupid fool_ , Baze wants to say, although it would be wrong of him to place this blame; wrong of it even to think it, when it is he who chooses to follow the harebrained stubbornness of his husband’s Force-driven ways.

“I’m here,” he says instead, clasping Chirrut’s hand. His skin is clammy where it is usually cool, but Baze places his lip against Chirrut’s knuckles anyway, bestowing his husband’s calloused hand with kisses of blood and fear. He had hoped to protect Chirrut from the worst of the explosion, but it is difficult to discern the extent of his injuries amidst the dirt, the gore, and the tatters of his beloved robes. His shoulder is a horrific mess of blood and burns from the blaster bolt that had knocked him from the console just seconds after pushing the switch. Yet he is awake and breathing - wheezing, coughing blood as Baze kisses more into his hand - and that is all that Baze had hoped for as he abandoned the bunker and followed Chirrut down gun-barrels and flame.

The thought of hope casts Baze’s mind towards the others - to Jyn and Cassian infiltrating the tower, and to Bodhi defending their ship across the shore. The other rebels are nameless people that Baze does not trust, but he trusts Jyn, Cassian, and Bodhi despite how little he knows of them - rebels in their own right, children thrust into war. It may be too much to hope that they all survive this mission when his hope can barely keep Chirrut alive. Baze will wish for it anyway, but he doubts that the Force will answer him just as it has never answered him before.

Chirrut grimaces something of a smile, attuned to Baze’s thoughts in a way that Baze has never understood. He attempts to sit up, hissing in pain as his robes snag against open wounds, but Baze is there to coax him back down onto the battlefront, to still, to rest despite the screaming dogfights and the distant - approaching - crackle of stormtroopers preying across the beach. They are at the Empire’s mercy lying here, Baze’s blaster in pieces and Chirrut’s staff somewhere unseen, and it will not be long before the troopers are upon them, marching from the fires like hollow monsters of the dark.

Baze tucks himself closer to his husband, moving sluggish through the dirt. His left arm flares in agony - not as numb as he believed - and something in his chest rattles at the effort. The blood in the sand may be his own - or it may be Chirrut’s, the rebels’, or even the Empire’s if they, too, can bleed, but it doesn’t matter. Blood is blood and war is war, but winning and losing are never as clear-cut as that.

“Baze,” Chirrut calls, curling his fingers around the ones that hold him still. He rasps the words, his voice a terrible sound, but even so he speaks what needs to be said - as he has always done, as he hopefully always will. “Can you hear that?”

Baze cannot hear much beyond his heart in his ears (Chirrut’s heart in his ears; still beating, thankfully still beating), but he listens as his husband implores. Fires spit around them, the wind gentle where the world is not, carrying the embers away. Beyond the flame are the troopers, metal hands grasping metal guns, their legs like stone sloshing through water and onto the sand. AT-ACTs march through the woods, felling trees and trampling roots, lumbersome and gigantic as they plod behind the stormtroopers. The tropical waters ripple and break beneath their footsteps, and Baze hears the waves flood over the shore.

“Yes,” he replies, closing his eyes as though this will rid him of the sound. He can hear the crash of X-wings into Scarif’s shallow lakes. He can hear gunfire ricocheting over the water, shouts and cries of pain amplified by the surface. And though he wishes it were not so, he can hear blood splattering over the stormtrooper’s metallic shells.

“I may be too far,” Baze grumbles, fear rising thick in his throat. It is not a fear that this may be true, per se, but rather that this may _not_ be true, that he _is_ close enough, that he _could_ and that he _must_. He has not reached for that part of himself in a long time (although he has felt it reaching for him, not in NiJedha or the sands of their home, but after that, at Eadu and Yavin IV and here - at Scarif, at the forefront of his greatest fear). Chirrut has never approved of his decision, but it has been many-a-year since he has brought it up so blatantly, dared to remind Baze of one of the countless things he had abandoned along with his robes.

Hope. Faith. Ignorance. _Bending_.

“Yes,” Chirrut disagrees. “You may.”

Baze laughs despite himself, despite the battle, the imperial troops, and the clunky approach of death over the grenade-blasted ground. He releases Chirrut’s hand with reluctance, afraid that he’ll never have the chance to hold it again, but then raises it at his husband’s encouragement, reaching beyond his body, his blistered skin and battered bones, for the part of himself that floods the forest floor, that washes Eadu with anger but Jedha so infrequently, and that rises and falls day-by-day, an eternal rhythm under the sky.

The shores of Scarif tremble about them. Chirrut is quiet and _dying_ in his lap, and Baze begs for the tides.

 

 

 

The tides answer.

But then - they always have.

 

 

 

“You said that you couldn’t bend,” Jyn accuses, weary rather than angry, clinging onto the side of the shuttle alongside the rest of them - those that Baze cares about: Chirrut, Bodhi, and Cassian, all of them _alive_. Now is not the time for an argument, not as the Death Star obliterates Scarif beneath them and Bodhi races to clear atmo before they are incinerated along with it, but Baze wouldn’t argue with Jyn anyway. She has spent her whole life at odds with every being, planet, and agender that she encounters, that she charges into, her heart a wild, hurting thing, and Baze does not have it in himself to be offended. Chirrut is the one who seeks confrontation, who dances with it, _breathes_ it. Baze would rather say nothing than risk causing discord.

With that being said, Jyn, like Chirrut, will press for answers as she sees fit. Baze can feel her stare as he swirls a handful of water over his husband’s chest, the water lighting the back of the shuttle with a faint blue glow.

“No, I said that I made use of heavy weaponry. I did not say I could not bend,” Baze explains with a rumble, his Standard sluggish from pain, from the lack of use, and from the tired ache of his soul. Before that fateful day in NiJedha, before _what do you know of kyber crystals_ and a horizon swallowing the sun, Baze had scarcely spoke in Standard. Now, it is a necessity with the rebels, with how few people alive may have knowledge of Jedhan at all.

“Right,” Jyn replies, and maybe she needs this confrontation, maybe she needs it to distract her from the shake of the shuttle, Cassian’s laboured breaths, Chirrut’s quieter ones, and her own pain, wherever she has hidden it. She doesn’t sound pleased with Baze’s response, but he isn’t surprised. “So - what then? Chirrut’s a bender _too_?”

( _Is he a Jedi?_ Cassian had asked, and Baze had laughed unrestrained at the man - the _boy_ , really - with the soft eyes and the hard smile, and the reprogrammed imperial droid at his back. To ask after the Jedi reveals the ignorance of a generation, and Baze had informed Cassian as such after they were shoved into Saw Gerrera’s holding cells. _The Jedi are no more_ , he had explained, as Chirrut chanted and Cassian paced at the door. _They were slaughtered years ago._

Briefly, Cassian had looked back into the gloom of the cell, likely as unsure of his cellmates as they were of him. _Some airbenders must have survived_ , he reasoned, but he seemed sceptical of this all the same.

 _Perhaps_ , Baze had consented. _But not Jedi._ )

Baze says nothing, but Jyn must glean the answer from his face, for her sigh is heavy and loud. Mercifully - or perhaps not, if she is too maddened to even ask - she does not probe for Chirrut’s element, and Baze continues healing his husband as the shuttle booms and pops and Bodhi desperately tries to obtain a comm-line to the rebel fleet.

When Jyn heaves herself into the cockpit to growl into the communications, Baze is glad. He doesn’t think she would believe that Chirrut is an airbender anyway. Most of the airbenders have been all but wiped out alongside the Jedi, but if there is anyone out in the universe who runs with the wind as Chirrut does, then they will do well to remain hidden. The mass genocide of the Jedi Order - the utmost elite of the airbenders, those who dedicated themselves as warriors to service of the Avatar - had not discriminated against the common people. In their search for the Avatar, the Empire killed airbenders and users of lightsabers of all ages and abilities, Jedi, civilian, and Guardian alike.

Many Guardians were murdered that day, and many more in trying to protect their loved ones. Baze had fought for Chirrut’s life - and lost his faith in the process.

(There are worse things to lose).

“Baze,” Chirrut mutters, adding _beloved_ in their Jedhan tongue. He rests a hand upon Baze’s, the water continuing to swirl and heal around him. The light brightens his pale, sightless eyes, and he smiles despite his grievous injuries. “I will be well. Rest, if you can. Heal Cassian, if you must. I can see him wincing from here.”

Baze goes, shaking his head at the age-old joke. He bends most of the contaminated water back into a canteen - once, he wouldn’t have spilled any of the water, but that was many years ago - and sets it beside the bench. Then he uncaps a second canteen and bends it over to Cassian, whose arguments fall on old and selectively deaf ears.

“Fear not,” Chirrut calls, blind but no less aware of Cassian’s hesitation. The captain masks it well, but Baze can feel his tension beneath the ripples of the water. “My husband was once one of the most gifted healers in the temple.”

From the cockpit, there is a crash that sounds suspiciously as though someone has kneed the console.

“I’d believe it,” Cassian says weakly, just as Jyn cries, _married!_ and Bodhi emits a squeak that suggests he is trying to hide from her wrath by sliding under the chair.

Chirrut doesn't laugh, but his air of smugness has Baze cracking a smile.

It has been a long time since Baze used his bending to heal anybody, so there is little he can do for Cassian’s leg. This does not stop him from trying, much to Cassian’s gratitude and chagrin; Baze quiets him, grumbling away the _thank yous_ as undeserved, and then grumbles away Chirrut’s repeated reminders to rest as well. Baze _is_ undeserving of the gratitude. His waterbending is a sloppy, decades-forgotten art, and he is both ashamed to be using it and to be using it so selfishly. Now, especially, when he could have made a bigger difference on Scarif - on Eadu.

He could have made a difference on Jedha.

Chirrut is right. He was once _Guardian Malbus_ to most; _Healer Malbus_ to those who knew better. Now he is an assassin. Now Chirrut is all he has left to protect.

(Chirrut - and the three kids slumped half-dead in the shuttle).

Their return to Yavin IV passes in a haze of jungle greens and the cold, enclosing grey of the flight-hangar, hands and skin and voices, and frantic orange jumpsuits spinning incessantly in Baze’s vision. Waterbending is exhausting - he had forgotten just how exhausting - and he only dimly hears the medics and their jargon as they hound the Rogue One crew. The sky itself seems to be cheering, great, thunderous calls of victory echoing around the base. The sound is overwhelming and the crowds are triumphant and thick, their faces blurring together into a jostling swamp of euphoria. Baze can hear the shriek of TIE fighters in the wheels of the hospital beds. The patter of rifle-fire beats with the monitors. Chirrut’s voice is soft and low, soothing, a hand upon Baze’s arm, and Baze can hear him dying again as Scarif’s seas surge up to flood the bloodied shore.

Terror burns in his chest, a white-hot hand seizing his throat. Voices squall around him, their words intelligible like the crackle of stormtrooper radio in his ears. The touch at his arm loosens, a momentary relief, and then a cool wind flutters over him, calming the hot flush of his skin. Baze’s hair tangles in the breeze, loose curls brushing over his face. With a soft yet weighted _tap-tap_ , his two braids rap against his chest like a drumbeat, steady, like a heart beating in time, and Baze uncurls his fist to welcome the wind like a handshake, like Chirrut’s fingers finding his own.

Chirrut’s bending is not something to be contained, or moulded, or shaped as one wills - unlike Baze’s bending, carving rivers, flooding plains, ice and rain as it falls; gales are fleeting, untamed, moving when and where as they decide, and Chirrut seldoms commands it as others command the fires and earth, instead letting it guide him, merely coaxing its disorderly ways.

A gust against his face has Baze closing his eyes, nose scrunching. He hears, rather than sees, the infirmary reappear, the _whoosh_ of oxygen and the clatter of clipboards, pens, and equipment. There are people talking indistinctly in a language he doesn’t recognise, but Baze would rather listen to the wind whispering through his hair, quiet laughter bouncing up his tattered armour and past his ears; a jab at their size, were it anybody else, but it’s Chirrut’s voice that Baze hears in the air, and Chirrut has always loved the most unlovable parts about him.

“There you are,” Chirrut says, and he could be talking to the wind for how much it adores him, humouring his every desire and whim. But he’s not talking to the wind, he’s talking to _Baze_ , and Baze grumbles at the affection as he opens his eyes, levelling his sightless husband with a dour expression.

The wind has the prudence to flee, but Chirrut just smiles. He returns his hand to Baze’s arm, offering it a cautious _there-there_ pat, and Baze feels a rush of fondness. To the rest of the room, he glowers, self-consciousness building as he notices the nurses hovering a few feet away, but for Chirrut, Baze ducks his head just slightly, feeling the wind whistle in the space between their tired and so recently mistreated bodies.

“I daresay we have worried the nurses enough,” Chirrut says, notably making no move to beckon the anxious medical staff closer. Rather, he lifts his hand to lay it upon Baze’s cheek, mindful of the injuries that the blood has hidden there. “Whatever will I do with you?”

Baze huffs a laugh, feeling Chirrut’s touch drive the lingering sensations of Scarif away. “Do as I to you,” he replies, before leaning down to wet his husband’s forehead with a kiss.

 

 

 

Baze would not describe the medical staff at Yavin IV as _impressed_ with the state of the Rogue One crew. Everybody else, it seems, goggles at the surviving crew with nothing short of reverence, but the medics simply hum at their clipboards and deadpan in long-suffering tones. _Well I’ve never seen somebody break their leg in so many places and then proceed to walk on it before_ , announces once nurse, and Cassian colours an odd shade of pink like a child unused to being chided. Another nurse clucks her tongue at Chirrut’s shoulder and rushes him deeper into the infirmary, and although Chirrut accepts the manhandling with his typical charm, Baze acquiesces with a reluctance that only the sedative that somebody jabs into him can quell.

“Welcome back,” drawls a nurse when he awakens, their reptilian scales flickering in the harsh light of the medical ward. Baze blinks groggy and disorientated, his mismatched thoughts stumbling out as a question, and the nurse rolls two gleaming, amber eyes behind three sets of eyelids. “Your husband wishes for me to gravely inform you that he has _gone blind_ , but as I fail to appreciate the humour of such a trivial announcement, I will instead inform you that all surviving members of the Rogue One crew are recovering. You have been asleep for ninety-three hours and your arm has been temporarily immobilised to reduce any further damage.”

The nurse lists off various other injuries, each more grisly than the previous. Baze ceases to listen at their lacklustre impression of Chirrut, and instead rolls his bandaged head to the next bed over, where Chirrut himself is perched in deep meditation. A white hospital gown and an IV line subvert his air of tranquillity, but Chirrut seems unconcerned, comfortable and cross-legged on the centre of the bed. His mouth forms familiar words, soundless, but chanting them all the same, and Baze watches with none of his usual exasperation, barely registering when the nurse walks away.

 _I am one with the Force and the Force is with me_.

No matter how deep inside of himself he wills it, Baze remembers a time when Chirrut’s mantra was his to share. There was once a time when Baze would repeat the mantra, never to the same excess but just as sincerely, bestowing only goodwill upon others, a time when he believed in the Force and spared strangers a kind word. But that was before the Empire set its sights on Jedha, on the Jedi, and slaughtered thousands of airbenders across the span of a few bloody and unspeakable days.

Yet, Baze cannot deny what he witnessed on the shores of Scarif. Reaching the master switch should have been impossible, just as the entire mission had been impossible, a suicide run, a chance for redemption, one last chance to fight against an enemy before they were beaten into their graves. Many lives were lost, the Rogue One crew nearly obliterated into the sand, and Baze had been prepared to give his own alongside them - not for the cause, and not for the rebellion, but for Chirrut, for Jyn, and for hope. Chirrut is the only person left in the world who has need for a grizzled, battle-jaded assassin whose hands have forgotten how to heal and whose tongue has forgotten how to pray. Baze had not wanted to die, but in those frightful moments as he had dragged himself across the sand to Chirrut, alive or dead but motionless, lifeless either way, he had not wanted to live a life where Chirrut was not there.

Had the Force protected Chirrut, willed him to work the switch where his bending could not? Had it willed Baze there as well, answered his plea, and surged the tides up to swallow Scarif’s shores?

 _Am I one with the Force_ , Baze wonders, closing his eyes to the hospital rhythm: staff pacing the corridors, equipment clattering and monitors beeping, and the steady reassurance of Chirrut’s breaths. He is uncertain if he wants to believe again - if he can, after all of this time, or if the Force will even accept the belief from a heart that wavers so.

He has not been good to the Force for many years.

 

 

 

Baze tries not to dwell on the matter, but his worries have always gotten the better of him. Activity in the infirmary is sluggish, and Baze grows restless from the slow recovery. Chirrut appears not to mind the lull, using the opportunity to meditate or prattle into the unsuspecting ears of the medical staff, but Baze recognises the charm and wit as the facade it is. Chirrut has never been one to sit still, and the fact that he passes so many hours in meditation is not evidence of his dedication to the Force, but to boredom. However, Chirrut has yet to voice his complaints, but Baze knows that the day he does is the day that the nurses better prepare themselves for chasing him across the rooftops.

Cassian is equally agitated by the uneventful days. He pesters any and all visitors for information on the rebellion, the Empire, and the stolen Death Star plans. Most of the rebel forces learn to steer clear of the infirmary when Cassian isn’t knocked out on pain medication, something which Baze is grateful for. Socialising has never been something he enjoys; he is not a talkative person, defaulting to silence and preferring not to express his opinion to those he does not implicitly trust. Chirrut talks enough for the both of them anyway, and Baze’s opinions mean little when he stands by Chirrut regardless of any disparities between them.

Bodhi visits as often as he can, usually with Jyn at his heels. She scarcely visits by herself, as unnerved by the ruckus of the rebel base as Cassian is separated from it, and Baze suspects that Bodhi is the reason she drops by the infirmary at all. Bodhi has the means of reaching even the most closed off of hearts with his hopeful eyes and toothy smile, and although Baze does not mean to worry, he cannot bear the thought of Bodhi running into trouble in the compound without one of the crew at his side. Perhaps this is why Jyn flits about as she does, yearning for the stability of a family but so very unwilling to open her heart to the chance.

The fact that Bodhi is a firebender only troubles Baze further. He had known this long before he met Bodhi, the wanted announcements calling for _an imperial pilot_ and warning of his firebending skills, but it had hardly made a difference then. Baze had cared more of Bodhi’s imperial allegiance than the firebending; the Empire is not synonymous with firebending, and while many imperial officers do command the flames, just as many have no bending skills to speak of. That does not make Baze trust Jyn or Cassian any less, just as Bodhi’s firebending had not made Baze hate him anymore than he already had.

He is grateful that Cassian stopped him from strangling Bodhi. Not only would a valuable asset to the rebellion been needlessly lost, but Baze would have killed a kind, frightened, but ceaselessly brave young man; a man who does not deserve the rebellion’s apprehension, a _child_ , really, who never asked to be a firebender and who never wanted to be part of a war. Baze has enough blood on his hands as it is, and Bodhi’s doesn’t deserve to be there.

“I’m not that good at bending. I was just a cargo pilot. They didn’t bother training me or anything,” Bodhi insists, hands fidgeting in his lap. He is sat at Chirrut’s bedside, his usual spot, and one that puts him right in the centre of their motley group. This probably had not been his intention, but he is just as susceptible to Chirrut’s - cheeky and highly persuasive - moue as everybody else, and does not have the heart to move.

Jyn stews by the door. Nobody has yet to enquire after her foul mood, but it’s only a matter of time before Chirrut dares. Baze and Cassian had side-eyed one another as she stomped in and agreed not to say anything, but Chirrut wouldn’t have gotten the memo even if Baze had written it in braille and lobbed it at him. The way that Bodhi keeps glancing at Jyn suggests that his bout of nerves and her temper are related, and they probably both explain why Jyn is rubbing her knuckles as though she recently hit something with them.

“Surely there is a firebender in this base who may be willing to teach you?” Chirrut asks. “From what I’ve seen, the rebellion has recruited individuals from all across the galaxy.”

Chirrut, of course, has not _seen_ anything of the sort, but nobody argues the semantics.

“I can’t think of any firebenders,” Cassian admits, dashing any and all hopes. “The proportion of non-benders is very high. You wouldn’t have much trouble finding an earthbender, but even waterbenders are few.”

Baze cannot prevent the twitch of his jaw as Cassian nods towards him. He has not considered himself a waterbender for a long time, but he cannot begrudge Cassian: Baze can waterbend, ergo, he is a waterbender. The fact that Scarif was his first attempt at bending in over two decades means nothing, apparently.

“Chirrut’s a bender,” Jyn inserts. She falls silent just as curtly as she spoke, as though desperate to make her point but unwilling to consider herself a part of the conversation. Fortunately for her, attention shifts swiftly to Chirrut, who blinks doe-eyed despite being blind to the stares.

“Ah. Yes,” he says. “I had forgotten that my darling husband gave that away.”

Baze colours faintly, but Chirrut’s smile is easy and carefree. He would be patting Baze’s knee where they sitting together, and Baze is abruptly grateful that they’re not. The kids don’t need to see them getting physically sentimental with each other.

“You’re not - you’re not a firebender, are you?” Bodhi asks, hope renewed.

Chirrut’s eyes flutter and his smile fades, leaving his face sickly-pale and sad. His attempt to cover it with cheer falls flat. “I’m afraid not. I’m an airbender, in fact! I would wager to be the only airbender in this _entire_ star system.”

Cassian and Bodhi say nothing, lost for words in the face of this declaration, but Jyn has never had any trouble with powering on.

“Weren't the airbenders all killed?” she asks, tone brisk and defensive. She frowns at Baze in lieu of pointlessly looking at Chirrut, and thus doesn't notice Chirrut’s wince. The others do, if Bodhi’s revived fidgeting and the way Cassian tries to smother himself in the bedsheets are any indications.

“He doesn't - he doesn't need to _prove it_ ,” Bodhi splutters, finding it safer to scowl at his hands. “You've never seen me firebend -”

“But the Empire -”

“The _Jedi_ ,” Cassian says, interrupting Jyn with a sound of realisation. “You said you weren’t a Jedi.”

“And I'm not,” Chirrut agrees. Jyn bites back whatever she was going to say, but if Chirrut senses that they have all narrowly dodged an argument - and Baze has no doubt that he does - then he breezes over it, continuing on. “The Jedi were elite airbending warriors; I certainly wasn't up to par.”

“Bullshit,” Jyn mutters, spitting the last of her anger. Baze thinks that might have been a compliment, and Chirrut seems to think so too, for he laughs loud and delighted, the bridge of his nose dusting pink.

“Would you show us?” Bodhi asks, excited now it’s apparent that Chirrut has taken no offence. “I mean - not in here, obviously, but it’s not like anyone in the base will rat you out to the Empire -”

“Of course,” Chirrut replies, laying a hand upon his shoulder. Bodhi calms at the touch, brightening with a wobbly grin, and so obviously Chirrut puts his foot in it by adding: “Would you honour us with a display of your firebending in return?”

Bodhi’s jaw clacks together. Baze recognises the face of a man trying his hardest not to lie. “Oh. Um - sure, I guess. We’ll have to find somewhere quiet or something -”

“The rebels have been causing you trouble,” Chirrut deduces, and Bodhi laughs weakly, shrinking into himself.

“Er, I wouldn’t say -”

“They’ll stop if they know what’s good for them,” Jyn throws in, confirming Baze’s suspicions about her punching somebody.

“Who? What did they do?” Cassian presses. His head swings from Bodhi to Jyn, apparently deciding that she’ll be forthright with an explanation. This turns out to be a good call as Bodhi hides his face behind his hands; Chirrut offers another comforting touch, an apologetic, _sorry for outing you_ kind of pat, but Bodhi merely sighs.

“Just said some things, it’s nothing important -”

“Jyn would not punch somebody without cause,” Chirrut says, and Baze almost, _almost_ laughs.

“That’s what _you_ think,” Jyn mumbles, unheard beneath Bodhi’s vehement cry of, “I didn’t _ask_ her to - ”

Her eyes harden. Baze sighs a long-suffering plea for patience at the ceiling.

“Well then I _won’t_ next time,” Jyn snaps, and she has thrown herself up and out of the door before anybody can offer a soothing word. Bodhi’s expression shutters in her wake, revealing just how terrified he is by the prospect of facing the rebels alone - or of Jyn’s fury, Baze considers, as they all watch the door bounce back open with a grinding, almost chilling creak and clang against her overturned chair.

Bodhi’s next sigh is more of a hysterical groan. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said anything.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Cassian says. “Who’s giving you trouble? We’ll sort them out.”

“Really,” Bodhi warbles, mouse-like in the centre of the room. “It’s fine -”

“ _Bodhi_.”

“Oh god, all right, okay. Okay. It was just some of the engineers, I don’t know who they were. I was just in the hangar having a look at the X-wings. They didn’t do anything, they were just calling me a _spy_ and saying that I can’t be trusted around the fighters because I’m a _firebender_ and then Jyn just _appeared_ and -” He shrugs helplessly, as is the norm when dealing with Jyn’s temper. His eyes are pleading when he says, “I didn’t mean for anyone to get hurt.”

“We know,” Cassian assures, his voice soft. Baze feels a rush of affection for these ridiculous, twenty-odd-year-old children that he’s become surrounded by. He almost cannot believe that he fought in battle beside them, but then a fire glints in Cassian’s eyes and for a moment, just a moment, he is as ferocious as Jyn as she stormed from the room. Cassian’s injuries ensure that he cannot hunt Bodhi’s aggressors down any time soon, and Baze knows that the engineers should consider themselves fortunate for their borrowed time.

“I should go after Jyn,” Bodhi says, casting a reluctant gaze to the door. “She’ll probably yell at me.”

“Give her time to cool down,” Chirrut suggests, providing the excuse that Bodhi is so desperately seeking. “Would you like to learn about airbending in the meantime? I may not be able to answer all of your questions, but I shall endeavour to try.”

Bodhi _lights up_. Chirrut mirrors him - _his joy shines_ , Baze can hear his husband say - and Baze shifts into a more comfortable position, gauging that this conversation may take a long, long while.

He doesn’t realise he has drifted to sleep until he feels the bed dipping under Chirrut’s weight, hears the IV stand clattering, and recognises the hand stroking his thigh through the duvet, senseless little circles rubbing into his skin. Baze mumbles a greeting, shaking the covers away to free his arm; he jostles his other arm in the process, wincing in pain. Chirrut shushes him and apologises for the noise in the same contradicting breath, and Baze drags his eyes open in defiance. _I’m awake_ , the sticky slap of his lips seems to say, fighting back a yawn, _I wasn’t asleep_.

Chirrut huffs a laugh and kisses his nose. Baze wiggles it in indignation, grumbling something of a question - _the nurses? Cassian?_

“The captain is asleep,” Chirrut reassures, and yet he whispers in Jedhan still. “And the nurses certainly won’t mind.”

Baze doubts that, but there is nothing in the world with the power to part him from Chirrut, not anymore (least of all a few angry nurses), so he shuffles over to make room for his husband to slide into bed. It’s a tight squeeze for which they will both blame the other, especially as Baze can’t roll onto his side as he usually would, and Chirrut is still attached to various monitors, but they make do. The nurses will not be pleased to find them nose-to-nose and hip-to-hip, and Baze wraps his arm around Chirrut’s shoulders to make separating them even more of a challenge.

“Wore Bodhi out, did you?” Baze grumbles, surprised that he slept through the conversation. Chirrut is the heavy sleeper of the two of them; Baze lived too many years seeking shelter between the suspicious and the decrepit parts of civilisations not to rest with his repeater cannon in hand.

“Bodhi was very receptive to my tales,” Chirrut huffs without any real heat behind his words, prodding Baze with a finger. Baze tries to bite back a hiss and fails - he’s sore in places that he never thought he could be sore, and he’s tumbled _Chirrut_ into bed - and Chirrut’s touch eases, soothing the bruises he cannot see. “I’m sorry, my love. I should let you sleep.”

Baze shakes his head so that the thick bundles of his hair slap across Chirrut’s face. “Tell me about your talk with Bodhi,” he prompts, ignoring his husband’s sputtering.

“I may wear _you_ out with these tales,” Chirrut warns. Nevertheless, he begins reciting the last few hours into Baze’s shoulder, and Baze falls asleep to the gentle recollection of their childhood, to stories of the Jedi, and teachings of the Whills.

 

 

 

Chirrut screaming tears Baze from his slumber. He snatches his repeater cannon from the bedside only to lift empty, useless hands to the air. People bustle about him, voices raised in panic, screeching in urgent, sharp-tongued languages, and Baze throws himself up without a weapon - _he is a weapon_ , gun-less, armour-less, and across the room to the sound of Chirrut’s terror. Adrenaline blinds him to rationale, he sees only Chirrut hunched over, hand at his mouth and eyes blown white with fear. Bandages swaddle him, oozing blood and sweat and tight around his heaving, gasping ribcage. Baze growls, somebody yells - the whole room begins to yell, sirens whirring and metal crashing and voices, _Baze, Baze stop!_ over it all. White-clothed bodies trying to stop him, hands try to tame him, and the jug of water that Baze can feel _brimming_ explodes, water and glass shattering at the reach of his hand.

 _He’s a waterbender!_ somebody yells, and Baze flicks his wrists, yanking his arm from its sling to fling the water over his husband. It _cracks_ against the bedframe and freezes, water pouring into ice as it slams into the wall. The people crowding Chirrut scatter, ducking away from the shards of glass. Baze dives across the room and crashes into his husband; Chirrut’s breath catches with a terrible sound, ice arched around him and Baze at his side, and then he sobs once, then twice, and then ceases to utter a sound.

Horror seizes Baze’s chest. He croaks _Chirrut_ , garbles Jedhan, and then grunts as a needle sinks into his skin. His shield of ice trembles but he cannot maintain it, and Baze loses himself to millions of people perishing many star systems away.

 

 

 

Alderaan is gone. An entire planet destroyed. Baze wakes up to the aftermath in the rebels’ eyes: Cassian’s sleepless shadows, Jyn’s horror and the fire that it fuels, and Bodhi’s hard determination, the set of his mouth, and weight of his gaze. Fatigue drains the nurses; _you’ve been unconscious for two days_ , they explain, giving Baze a wide berth as he awakens. The ice has been melted and mopped from Chirrut’s bedside, but no-one has replaced the jug. Baze’s gaze lingers where the water used to be and decides that this is probably for the best.

Chirrut doesn’t talk for three days. They are both discharged and offered accommodation within the barracks, provided that they don’t cause any trouble and _rest_. Baze’s arm is healing slower than he would like - Chirrut would take a dig at his _old age_ were he speaking to Baze at all - but time is a luxury he didn’t think he would have, and he isn’t in a rush to use his left arm again. Day-to-day activities are a pain with only one arm, but his injury is the last, flimsy obstacle between him and waterbending again. Bodhi, certainly, is eager to share in experiences and techniques now that it has been revealed that both Baze _and_ Chirrut are benders, and while Baze knows that his husband will never _demand_ anything from him, Chirrut has a knack of getting what he wants. And if he wants Baze to waterbend again, then Baze has already lost the fight.

(This is due in part to Baze’s inability to deny him anything, so Chirrut’s persuasive smiles and tongue-twisting wit are not entirely to blame).

Yet all of this matters little with the destruction of Alderaan. Baze’s apprehensions about waterbending are miniscule to the billions of lives lost overnight. The rebel base is in uproar. Over twenty officers were hospitalised as the Death Star struck true, people of all species and Force-sensitivities resonating with the terror of a civilisation as it was blasted from a solar system. Baze still hesitates to name his connection to the Force, to bending, to the belief that he had thrown so carelessly away, but even he can feel the absence of Alderaan in his chest. He can only imagine how it must feel to Chirrut, who rests little and sleeps even less, tossing and turning at night but unwilling - _unable_ \- to share the thoughts that plague his mind.

Watching Chirrut suffer does not encourage Baze to think kindly of the Force.

(Watching Chirrut suffer does not encourage Baze to think kindly at all).

And yet, hope remains. When a transmission claiming that the Princess of Alderaan has been rescued from the Empire and is aboard a YT-1300f light freighter by the name of the _Millennium Falcon_ reaches Yavin IV, the rebel base explodes with activity. Baze is not in the command centre at the time - he has seldom visited there, going at the summons of Mon Mothma and lingering only as necessary - but the news spreads quickly throughout the base, radios calling for the councilmen and doors slamming open to permit frantic messengers. Despite the chaos, Baze learns of the hard-earned victory not from the rebels, but from Chirrut, who is sat unsettled without his Guardian robes or staff, unable to meditate and unable to sleep, but who smiles quite suddenly and lifts the room with peals of laughter. A teacup slides out of Baze’s grasp at the sound, but the crash of it smashing against the counter in their rudimentary quarters is lost to the hiss-clunk of the door sliding open and sticking, as ever, about two-thirds of the way across the room. This doesn’t stop Bodhi from scrambling inside with a cheer, and it’s just as well that Baze dropped the teacup, in the end, because he has to lunge to catch Bodhi as he stumbles over the doorstep.

“What is it? What has happened?” Baze urges, as concerned by Chirrut’s laughter as he is overjoyed that there is a reason for it, especially now, after three days of silence following Alderaan’s terrible fate, three lonely, nerve-wracking days where Baze ached for Chirrut to think not of the Force, but feared further unsettling his husband with this selfish, guilty need.

“The plans - the Death Star plans!” Bodhi pants, still finding it within himself to feel self-conscious at his blunder despite the excitement. “They’ve been found! They’re with the Princess of Alderaan and she’s on her way here and apparently - apparently -” He trails off, momentarily thrown by the sight of Chirrut’s gummy grin, but then continues with his voice dropped almost to a mutter, speaking with the awe of the children that used to frequent the temple gates. “They’re saying there’s an _airbender_ with her.”

Baze doesn’t know about that, but right now, he will believe anything that emboldens Chirrut to smile.

The arrival of the Millennium Falcon takes the rebel base by storm. It is a clunky, crescent-shaped ship that sets itself apart in the sky, as noisy and bold as the starbird but rightfully embodying the legend all the same. The four individuals that spill out of it - three humans and a _wookiee_ \- do not appear to be the _hero-sort_ , but the rebels say much the same about the crew of Rogue One. Baze watches from a distance as the Princess and her rescuers are welcomed into the base, Chirrut practically buzzing at his side. The so-called _airbender_ is probably the young boy with the dusty hair and the air of parched, desert sands so like those of Jedha about him. The other man must be the pilot, a survivor, equipped with blasters, knives, and tools as Baze himself once was. Yet, it is the Princess that draws Baze’s eye. There is a fire in her that he has seen before - in Jyn, blazing fierce; in Bodhi, once wavering, but now steady; and even Cassian, perhaps the fire that has burned for the longest of all. It is the Princess, of these strangers, that brings hope to the rebellion - a hope that Baze has not felt for many years.

On Scarif, he had been waiting to die. But as the Princess leads a smouldering R2 unit into the base, Baze takes his husband’s hand and wonders if he should be finding a reason to live instead.

 

 

 

Chirrut’s first meeting with the airbender - with _another_ airbender - goes just about as expected. Fortunately, they’re in the mess hall at the time, otherwise Baze doesn’t think the young bender ever would have escaped from Chirrut’s eager interrogation. Chirrut means well, but he is prone to behaving in an overzealous manner when something - or some _one_ , Baze knows first-hand - catches his eye. The fact that they are sequestered in the mess hall along with half of the rebel fleet dissuades him from going _too_ overboard, but the airbender, Luke, seems to take it in stride.

He is, in fact, the one to initiate the conversation. The group at the table - Baze, Chirrut, Jyn, and Cassian, left alone by most of the fleet much to their gratitude - receive a full two-second warning before Luke appears like a beacon through the crowd and hurries towards them, the throngs of hungry rebels parting from his way.

“Heads,” Jyn mumbles around her cup of caf, right before Luke _blinds_ them all with a smile. Even Chirrut seems stunned, and Baze can already hear his husband’s voice wobbling with how the Force is _incandescent_ around this twerpy, rag-tag scruff of a boy.

“Hello,” Luke says, beginning awkwardly. “I - err - you’re the Rogue One crew, right? Everyone’s saying that you were the ones who got the plans to Artoo, which is - I mean - that’s _amazing_. Oh - Artoo’s an R2-D2 droid. I’m -”

“ _Luke Skywalker_ ,” Chirrut says, to which Jyn kicks out a chair and mutters, “We know.”

“You can sit,” Cassian clarifies, his eye roll admonishing them both. “This is Jyn Erso and Chirrut Îmwe. That’s Baze Malbus. I’m Captain Andor - Cassian Andor. You just missed Bodhi.” He pours Luke a cup of caf and slides it across the table, before apparently deciding that he has said enough and returning to his datapad.

Jyn too, is disinclined to participate in the looming conversation, which leaves Baze the role of as damage-control as Luke blinks his curious eyes towards Chirrut.

“Bodhi?” Luke repeats, clearly testing Chirrut’s willingness to answer all of his questions. Picking Chirrut is definitely the best choice, and Baze resists the urge to sigh at this mounting disaster. For his husband’s sake, he hopes Luke will share in the excitement of finding another airbender - given that the tales of Luke’s bending are true, of course.

“Our pilot,” Chirrut explains. “He will be disheartened to know that he missed the opportunity to meet you.”

“Oh, well.” _Forces_ , Baze thinks as Luke fumbles, _he’s so young_. “I’ll have to go and catch up with him later! You two are Guardians, right? Of the Force?”

“Of the Whills,” Chirrut corrects, smiling as Luke slurps the caf. “We once resided within the Temple of the Whills in NiJedha. But that was a long time ago.”

“You’re from Jedha? I - I think I felt that, when it happened. I’m sorry for your loss.”

Chirrut inclines his head. “And we are sorry for yours. Your sorrows weigh heavy in the Force.”

Luke startles. “Do they? I don’t know much about the Force, really. I - my teacher - he didn’t have time to teach me a lot about airbending. I wish -” He sucks in his bottom lip, struggling with the words. Chirrut is seconds away from bursting, so Baze lays a hand on his thigh and squeezes lightly, judging Luke’s expression where his husband cannot.

“He said there weren’t many airbenders left anymore,” is how Luke decides to continue. “And now there’s one less. There was so much he could’ve taught me. I’ve only ever used my airbending for little things - tricks. I don’t know how anyone expects me to fight with it.”

“I could teach you,” Chirrut says the second Baze relaxes his hand; _have at it_ , the gesture says, and Chirrut certainly wastes no time. “I am no Jedi, but it would be my honour.”

“You’re airbenders?” Luke breathes, goggling at them both. Beside him, Jyn swallows her caf wrong and splutters, the idea of Baze as an airbender apparently amusing her. Chirrut’s grin widens at the sound of her hastily covering the blunder with an excuse before ducking away from the table.

“Only him,” Baze rumbles.

Of course, Chirrut is not content to leave it at that. “My husband is a waterbender. He was once the most devoted Guardian at the temple and a venerable healer. It has been many years since he practised the art, but I know he is considering it once again.”

That fact that Baze himself is hardly aware of this decision clearly means nothing, but this doesn’t surprise him in the slightest. He suppresses a sigh, his jaw twitching with the effort, and Chirrut pats his knee in approval of his acquiescence.

“A waterbender?” Luke says, sounding just as enthused by this as discovering another airbender. “I’ve never met a waterbender before. There’s not much water on Tatooine. Can you bend caf?”

Chirrut laughs. Baze yearns to shush him, the back of his neck prickling with embarrassment at Luke’s quizzical gaze. The young airbender is almost shaking with excitement, although that may be the result of chugging the caffeine, and Baze feels the gruff defence he has toiled years to build yielding to yet another war-stricken child with hope in their eyes.

“Yes,” he admits, and even Cassian chokes on a laugh.

 

 

 

Baze’s arm is weak and discoloured when the nurses finally remove the cast, but his fingers all work and his elbow only clicks occasionally, so he considers himself fortunate. He could have easily required a mechanical replacement had his injuries been just slightly more severe, a thought which he uses to pacify his frustrations of readjusting to life with two hands. Chirrut says nothing of waterbending over the following days, but with how often he can be found in the company of Luke, meditating in a tiny pocket of quiet or halfway up the temple ruin with the fierce, jungle air at their backs, it is difficult to avoid talk of any sort of bending. Granted, Baze could simply bide his time elsewhere - and he does, on occasion, leaving the airbenders in some unreachable place to check up on Bodhi, glare Cassian into sleeping, or search the halls long and wide for any sign of where Jyn is cooped up inside. Baze has nothing connecting him to anybody else within the compound - except Princess Leia and her smuggler companion, Han Solo, perhaps, but they are trickier to pin down than Jyn; she, at least, could be said to seek Baze’s company herself, from time to time. But the truth of the matter is, whatever makes Chirrut happy makes Baze happy too, and if that includes trying to teach a boy how to sit on a compressed ball of air and then race around the temple courtyard, then so be it.

It has been a long, long time since Chirrut used his airbending without fear. The massacre of the airbenders never stopped him, just as the fall of the temple never eroded his belief in the Force, but the fear of discovery lingered years after the massacre. Still, compared to Baze, Chirrut is a sun that burns incessantly, love, hope, and faith contained within itself, maintaining itself, blazing so beautiful and so distantly, even after all these years. Baze’s faith waxes and wanes and he glows with hope in phases, but he will revolve around Chirrut for as long as he burns, bestowing upon him a love and dedication that few else are privileged to see.

Baze refuted his connection to the Force and cast aside his bending, and in its place he believed in only what he could see, the whir of a repeater cannon, and the blood on his hands. And yet - it called to him, on Scarif. It called to him when his blasters failed and the blood of others threatened to drown him, and Baze answered it in desperation, unable to believe that the Force would welcome him despite all he has done.

 _I am one with the Force_ , Chirrut says, and Baze thinks, _have I been with the Force all of this time?_

In some ways, approaching the prospect of waterbending again is easier to deal with. Belief in the Force - religious belief of any kind - and the ability to bend are not synonymous. Baze has met benders of all elements that laugh at any mention of the Force. And yet, Baze’s waterbending is so tightly woven with his faith - with the temple, with the home he once had and the people he once knew, the belief and the life that they shared - that he cannot distinguish between the two. To bend is to _believe_. And to believe is to admit that he has been wrong all along.

“Not wrong,” Chirrut assures, once his awe of Luke’s natural affinity has whittled Baze down into revealing his own thoughts on bending. ( _He is gifted_ , Chirrut had said, contemplating the decision Luke’s master had made in allowing the boy to construct a lightsaber. _I cannot teach him of Jedi; truthfully, I do not think there is much I can teach him at all_ ). Baze had not wanted to burden his partner with his fears, but they both had known that all this talk of bending would eventually come to this.

“And yet I’m certainly not right,” Baze grumbles, allowing the hand at his waist to rub away his anger, glad for the press of Chirrut’s body against his own, skin on skin, breath in breath. Their quarters has become no less cramped and tangled with vines, but the jungle of Yavin IV persists just as the sands of Jedha had stretched, and the rebels have long grown used to making way for the trees.

“No,” Chirrut agrees, humming a thoughtful sound. “Misguided, perhaps.”

He kisses Baze’s chin to soften the blow. Baze doesn’t offer the same courtesy as he yanks out a pillow and wallops Chirrut’s head.

Chirrut has the gall to laugh. “I’m sorry - I’m sorry my love, I tease you! I’m afraid I cannot answer this question for you. It is not up to me to decide how one should or should not believe. But Baze, _beloved_ , know I that stand by you no matter what you decide.”

Baze shoves the pillow back under his head and resettles, winding himself ever closer to Chirrut. The nights are dark and humid, so unlike the starlit Jedhan sands. There is little between them and indecency except three decades of marriage and a sheet, although Chirrut has, as per usual, claimed that for his own.

 _I know_ , he doesn’t say, but he kisses Chirrut’s cheek and the answer is heard.

 

 

 

The next morning dawns copper and green over the temple ruins. Chirrut disappears just as the sun claws its way through the jungle, waking Baze briefly with a kiss and then completely as he fights with the fault in their door. Baze decides against joining him for morning meditation - or helping him with the door, for that matter - and instead plods around their quarters until an itch to _leave_ , to do _something_ rolls up under his skin like the sea at the shore. They - with _they_ being everybody on the base bar Jyn, it seems - have been advised not to wander far from the compound, especially not on their own. Baze is quite capable of looking after himself, with or without a blaster, but Cassian appears from _thin air_ before he can make it even out of the hangar. Baze refuses to make chit-chat with a stranger, no matter how much Cassian vouches for said stranger, so this is how poor Bodhi ends up accompanying him into the jungle.

“Relax,” Baze says, clamping Bodhi on the shoulder. “Trees aren’t rebels. No one will care if you firebend them. Come, I won’t keep you long. I think there is a lake nearby -”

Bodhi’s uncertainty about their endeavour vanishes. “You’re going to _waterbend_?”

“Try,” Baze corrects, hushing him before his excitement disturbs the other rebels milling around. “I’m going to - try.”

As expected, it is his prediction, rather than Bodhi’s, that holds water - or doesn’t, as is the case. The water on this planet is _reportedly_ harmless, but Baze isn’t taking any chances. He stands clear of the lake and urges Bodhi even further away, mindful that the water brimming at the bank is not entirely under his control. Baze would have rather lost his arm than kept it and hurt one of the kids. Fortunately - or unfortunately, depending on one’s perspective - his fears are unfounded. Ripples stir the lake’s surface, viridescent waves trembling about the shadow of Baze’s hand. The water pops a few times, sucking in and bouncing back but never achieving a great height, and even when Baze eases closer, his boots taunting the sloping bank, the lake does not submit to his command.

He tries other waterbending forms, long-forgotten stances that he stumbles through like an earthbender. His movements should be fluid and effortless, a dance so graceful that it could lure one to sleep. Baze has always been built on the larger side, his body broad and rounded whereas Chirrut’s is sharp and lean, but this never dampened his bending. He could move silently, easily, slipping over the sands like foamy waves to shore. But now he is solid, grounded in his reluctance to change, and when he thinks of the sea and the tide rolling up gravel and rock, it's bloodshed he thinks of, fire, death, and grenades.

Baze clenches his fist and the lake splits apart, two walls of water careening away before crashing together like the forces on Scarif’s beaches.

“Baze?” Bodhi calls, jerking Baze back to himself. The lake quakes as the earth had crumbled beneath the AT-ACT’s steps, and he shakes away the thought before turning to Bodhi, who is wise to remain some distance away.

“How long -?” Baze begins, but Bodhi shakes his head, mouth set firmly.

“Can I - can I make a suggestion?” At Baze’s nod, he continues. “You’re thinking too much. I’m the same. If I get too worked up about what I should be doing or - or hurting other people, or doing something dangerous, then I can’t make a flame at all. But if I just _let_ it happen, then…”

Bodhi shrugs a shoulder and fire envelopes his hand. It coils around him, orange and blue, weaving between his fingers like a ribbon spitting smoke. He smiles at it, lips quirking shyly, and then snuffs it out with the slap of his fingers closing into his palm. When he opens his hand again, he is neither blistered nor burnt, but he does hunch into himself as he looks to Baze.

“You said you were bad at bending,” Baze says, the soft accusation prompting Bodhi to laugh.

“Oh, I am. I can’t do anything more impressive than that, really. No fireballs or anything. Nothing useful.”

“Physical power is not an indication of skill. You have good control - like a healer,” Baze rumbles, and Bodhi blushes, rubbing the back of his neck at the praise. He deserves it - that was firebending as Baze has not seen in many years, a moving, flickering, burning art compared to the fires of the Empire that blaze through villages and towns.

At this thought, Baze hums, looking back across the lake that so reminds him of Scarif.

 _Like a healer_ , he thinks, staring down at his hands.

There is only one true healer - a waterbender healer - in the compound, which means xe is not too difficult to locate. Buried deep within the infirmary, the healing room is far smaller than the one Baze and his fellow temple healers occupied. The crumbling edges of the ruin have misshaped its arches and domes, but although the ceilings and walls are overgrown by the jungle, it is tidy and well-maintained. Baze hesitates in the doorway, facing the replica of his past. Dark stone floors stretch out before him, swept free of leaves despite the overhanging branches. Shelves lined with jars protrude from the walls, unevenly spaced and unlabeled, but their contents familiar and well used. The centrepiece of the room, as though raised from the earth or rolled from the trees, is the pool. The water within flows endlessly, a cycle cascading with no end or beginning. Narrow conduits lines the ground, channels carved from the stone for the water to run. They bend and twist across the room, artificial arteries and veins, and Baze is mindful not to disturb their path as he enters, stepping into his memories of a time that has come around again.

Healer Magan’s eyes twinkle, two aquamarine gems within this bubble of Baze’s past. Slowly, as if not to spook Baze into fleeing, Magan sets aside xyr work and beckons for him to kneel - to settle, as though he truly can. Baze eases himself down opposite the humanoid, bones creaking as he forces his body to fold into its twenty-year-old self. Magan’s eyes are oceans, befitting of a healer so skilled, and Baze struggles to hold xyr stare.

“I was waiting for you to show your face, Healer Malbus,” xe says, revealing a mouthful of canines as xe smiles. “My colleagues informed me that you were quite skilled. Captain Andor has you to thank for saving his leg, I hear.”

Baze hadn’t known that, but he can hardly recall the first few days of his recovery, let alone their escape from Scarif. He must have been high on adrenaline to risk healing a major injury after neglecting his practice. Hopefully he hadn’t been thoughtless enough to attempt waterbending at any other time, but something in Magan’s smile suggests otherwise.

“I meant no disrespect,” Baze says, shoving those concerns aside. He will have to speak to Cassian later, and perhaps the rest of the Rogue One crew. There is no excuse for misusing his waterbending - _especially_ to heal. “I have been out of practice for many years. I am no healer.”

“And yet you are here,” Healer Magan says, dismissing him sharply. “I am old - older than you, I wager! - but I know a healer when I see one, _Baze_ Malbus.”

Xe utters his name like a reprimand, and Baze’s jaw twitches. He clenches his hands in his lap, willing himself to see this through despite the regret burning in his chest, scalding his throat, creeping up behind his eyes. Bodhi is _right_ to accuse him of overthinking, but now that Baze is here, meeting Healer Magan unplanned, unannounced, and acting entirely on a whim to do something _good_ with himself, Baze half-wishes he had taken the time to overthink and talk himself out of it.

“I - it is true,” he admits, dragging up this vulnerable part of himself, the part he scorned and buried and hid from the rising shadows of the world. “I wish to learn again.”

“Learn?” Magan cries, before throwing xyr head back to laugh. “What nonsense is that? No, you have already learnt. You’re here to remember, aren’t you? Speak up!”

Ice cold embarrassment fills Baze’s chest.  “I - yes, yes,” he insists, the tips of his ears tinging pink. He feels like a fumbling initiate all over again, just as uncertain of his waterbending then as he is now, and still cowering beneath the stare of the wisest and most terrifying elder.

Magan spits something that might be a curse. “Are you always this indecisive?” The _boy_ is left unsaid, but Baze hears it in the roll of xyr eyes. “Are you a patient? No. Are you one of my colleagues? _Certainly not_. Are you here to listen to me dictate my patient notes and take stock on all my herbs? I don’t think so, but that can be arranged if you would like to take those miserable tasks off my hands. Would you like that?”

Baze wills himself to be patient, wills himself not to sink into the floor. He’s here to do some good, he reminds himself. He’s here to ensure that Scarif - that Chirrut, dying, bleeding out in his arms - never happens again. “No.”

“Me neither,” Healer Magan says curtly, nodding more to xemself than Baze’s grumble. Xe waves a hand, the dismissive gesture contradicting the satisfied smirk splitting open xyr face. “Good. Then go. Go find one of those accident-prone engineers and bring them here for treatment. Make it quick. You’d be wasted as a secretary anyway.”

Baze goes - and returns with Chirrut, who managed to get himself air-blasted down seven of the temple’s stone steps. He babbles with pride as Baze drags him through the infirmary and deposits him at Magan’s feet; neither Baze or Magan share in his excitement, and this is the first of the only two things that they will ever agree on.

“I asked for an engineer.”

“You asked for accident-prone,” Baze contests, unable to _not_ give his concussed husband’s hand a squeeze. Luke and half of the rebel fleet were beside themselves when Baze found them, drawn by the crowd and the stark white of Luke’s shirt. More often that not, Luke equalled Chirrut, and Chirrut equalled disaster, and so Baze had abandoned all notion of stalking around the flight hangar until an engineer blew something up.

“I am _neither_ of those things,” Chirrut squawks, blinking blood from his squinted, sightless eyes, and Magan raises an eyebrow at Baze as though to ask, _you married this fool?_

(And this - this is the second of two things).

 

 

 

The days of peace may be a delusion as the Empire marches ever closer, but they are welcomed nonetheless. Jyn works relentlessly in the command centre, learning everything there is to know of the tactical and communication posts under Mon Mothma’s watchful eye. Bodhi quietly reveals to have made a friend amongst the X-wing pilots, and is eager for the chance to fly one himself. Cassian eventually gets his hands on a replacement KX-series droid for K-2SO, and slaves for hours in engineering to get up loyal friend back up and running. Luke’s two droids, R2-D2 and a gold-embellished protocol droid, can often be found in engineering, somehow becoming an almost permanent fixture at the captain’s workbench. From the little Baze knows of Luke’s droids, he cannot imagine Cassian welcoming their company at all. Perhaps they are just as uncontrollable as K-2SO, and Cassian doesn’t have a choice in the matter.

Although wary at first, the medical staff on base welcome Baze into their ranks - unofficially, and perhaps temporarily, but they are grateful for the extra hands all the same. He still cringes whenever addressed as _Healer Malbus_ , but fortunately, most of the staff stick to _Baze_ or various intonations of his surname. Chirrut, alternatively, beams with pride whenever he overhears a call of _Healer!_ across the infirmary, and he likes to roll the title from his tongue whenever possible, often between snippets of affectionate Jedhan or whenever he wants to remind Baze of the title he has earned.

They do not speak of the Force - of _Baze_ and the Force, for Chirrut seldoms speaks of anything else - and for that, Baze is grateful. His waterbending is still a finicky thing, less of an art and more of a series of childish squiggles in the sand, and Baze is reluctant to reach for the Force. Reaching for his bending is enough, for now, although he knows Chirrut will not let this matter lie.

The days of peace are welcome, but they are brief. Cassian herds the Rogue One crew into engineering one afternoon, K-2SO a shell and a circuit board in the corner, and they all know what he is to announce just from the look in his eyes.

The Death Star is approaching.

“We’re preparing to evacuate all nonessential personnel. ETA four days, no more. Prepare to move at any moment,” Cassian explains, glancing at each of them in turn: Jyn, arms folded and jaw set; Bodhi, beside her, goggles around his neck and oil smudging his nose; and Baze, hair braided down one shoulder and Chirrut leaning into his other, standing together as the world threatens to crumble again.

“I do hope we are not considered amongst _nonessential personnel_?” Chirrut says, but the way Cassian shifts his weight says it all.

“But _you’ll_ be staying? Is that it?” Jyn deduces.

Cassian sighs but doesn’t get the chance to argue, however, before Bodhi interrupts. “If you’re staying, so are we,” he agrees, sharing a nod with Jyn. “I can fly an X-wing. Jyn can probably run command by herself at this point. Baze and Chirrut -”

“I’m a healer,” Baze hears himself insisting, his tongue betraying his stubborn heart and the love that it feels - for Chirrut, for these kids, and the hope that they share. Saying it himself seems to soften the blow, and Baze lifts his chin, practically daring Cassian to argue.

Chirrut inclines his head, smile as bright as the sun, and loops his arm through Baze’s. “I go where he goes,” he declares, and Cassian throws up his hands.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!! :)
> 
> \--- fusion notes ---
> 
> The Force is energy that connects all things in the galaxy. People who are more attuned to the Force than most are benders, and how sensitive one is to the Force, and thus how naturally gifted one is at bending, is on a continuum. The Force is there regardless of whether or not you believe in it. You can bend regardless of whether or not you believe in the Force.
> 
> In this story, the first Avatar (bridge between the material/spiritual worlds and master of all four elements) was an airbender. This Avatar created the Jedi Order, a elite force of airbenders that kinda became the Avatar’s most faithful peacekeepers/warriors. Of course, this Avatar eventually died and a new Avatar was born, but the Jedi Order remained.
> 
> The first lightsaber was created as a gift to the first Avatar. One person from each of the four nations came together to build it. The airbender represented the Avatar, who was receiving the gift. An earthbender mined the kyber crystal. Maybe the plasma energy blade or “light” is symbolic of the firebender? And the waterbender was responsible for the hilt. The hilt is usually made of metal, but traditionally it was wood from the “Brylark tree” which is as strong as metal, and this is what the first lightsaber was made out of.
> 
> At first, only the Avatar (and eventually the Jedi) used lightsabers. This meant that only airbenders used lightsabers. However, once the Avatar died, other airbenders and other benders (water/fire/earth) also began using/creating them. In SW canon, lightsabers can be used by Jedi, Sith, and Force-sensitive people. Ergo, any bender can use a lightsaber.
> 
> As in SW canon, the Guardians of the Whills protect the kyber crystals and pass on the teachings of the Force. Non-benders and benders alike can join the Guardians, but only airbenders can become Jedi.
> 
> Order 66 did not just involve the Jedi. It was more like the massacre of the airbenders in atla canon, whereby Jedi and non-Jedi airbenders were killed. Some non-airbenders were also killed because they used lightsabers, and in SW canon, some places in the galaxy have the (false) belief that only Jedi use lightsabers, so this is true for my fic as well. So when the Empire were hunting down Jedi, they also killed any airbenders and any lightsaber-users that they found. There were more airbenders than people using lightsabers though, so this is why more airbenders were killed. In fact, pretty much all of the airbenders were killed. But the massacre of lightsaber users explains why lightsabers became rare. Using them was pretty much a death sentence for a long time, even if you weren’t an airbender.
> 
> The Temple of the Whills fell in two stages. This is probably not canon, but the book hasn’t been released yet, so I’m unsure of the timeline. Firstly, it was targeted by the Empire during Order 66, when the Jedi were being killed. As the Guardians were closely linked to the Jedi, it was a prime place to house airbenders and other benders. Many airbenders were slaughtered. The Temple didn’t last much longer after that, because it was then ransacked for kyber during the Imperial occupation, which remains in place up to the start of the film.


End file.
